I was reading an account of the 1982 Falkland Islands war. The RAF undertook the longest bombing mission ever attempted-with the almost obsolete Avro Vulcan bombers. On one of the last missions, a Vulcan was returning and ran low of fuel-the commander landed at a airfield in Rio de Janeiro. Had they had any less fuel, they would have either crashed or had to ditch.
The Vulcan is a pretty strange aircraft-if the crew bails out, usually only the pilot and co-pilot can make it out. It is probably too turbulent for the remaining crew to bail out of a plummeting Vulcan…so what if they had chosen to ditch the plane (in Guanabara Bay)?
The old James Bond film “Thunderball” depicted a hijacked Vulcan ditching-has it ever actually been done?
Not true. Only the pilot and co-pilot have ejection seats so if anything happened at low altitude everyone else was stuffed - but the general idea was for the pilots to remain at their station, keeping the aircraft under control, while the rest of the crew baled out, before ejecting themselves. This happened successfully on at least one occasion I can think of.
I have no idea if a Vulcan has ever ditched but I very much doubt it. On the other hand, at least one Nimrod has succesfully ditched.
The wikipedia page for the Avro Vulcan has a pretty comprehensive list of incidents and accidents:
There are no mentions of ditching in any of them. You definitely have a point about it being difficult for the remaining crew to bail out of the aircraft. There are quite a few accidents listed where they weren’t able to make it out of the aircraft. The entire crew did survive some of the accidents though. It wasn’t always a death sentence.